I grew up with a handsome black and white tomcat called Oscar for company. My Mum had him from before I was born, and while I don’t think he was particularly thrilled at my arrival, I loved him. As the years went by and he got older his kidneys began to fail and he grew thin and weary. When I was 10 or 11 years old (I’m not sure exactly when it was) Mum woke me up earlier than usual one morning before school. I was excited – I remember sitting up in bed cross-legged, bouncing up and down thinking that she had a surprise for me. Instead she started crying and told me that Oscar had died in his sleep in her arms that night and she’d woken me up early so I could say goodbye to him. Mum had put him in his basket, curled up in the way he always used to sleep, on top of his favourite blanket. I sat down on the floor next to him and stroked him and I remember being surprised at how cold his smooth silky fur felt beneath my nervous fingertips. I was utterly devastated. I still am actually – just writing about the memory is creating a big lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. I remember bursting into sobs at school on the way out of the classroom for playtime, unable to hold my feelings in any longer. We buried him that evening in our back garden, planted snowdrop bulbs on his grave and nailed a little wooden cross that my stepdad had made to the fence above where he lay in the flowerbeds. To this day I can’t see a snowdrop without thinking of Oscar.
My Mum refused to get another cat, though I begged and begged and begged. She said he was “irreplaceable”. As I got older I came to accept that it wasn’t going to happen, and so I stopped asking. I went through being ill, and recovery, and travelling, and moving out of the home I’d grown up in for the last 21 years to move in with my then boyfriend (now husband). We relocated to Stafford, renting various different properties until we eventually bought our first home seven and a half years ago. Three children later, a slightly less-than-comfortable income and an allergic husband meant that although I still longed for a cat, it didn’t look likely to happen.
It didn’t stop me thinking about the possibility though. My eldest daughter is absolutely terrified of all animals and I wondered if having a kitten might help her overcome her fear. I weighed up the pros and cons, had endless discussions with my husband and dismissed the idea several times over. It just didn’t feel like the right time. And then, just after Halloween last year, I saw an advert for the Cats Protection League on my Facebook newsfeed. I couldn’t help myself – I clicked on the link and was faced with a page full of the most gorgeous kittens I’d ever seen – two little black and white ones (Hocus and Pocus) and three tiny ginger ones (Pumpkin, Squash and Boo). We talked it through as a family, involving the girls as much as possible, had a home visit from one of the volunteers and went to see the kittens with their ‘foster mum’ who was looking after them until they were old enough to be rehomed. Four out of the five had been reserved, but Pumpkin was still available. For me, it was love at first sight and I think my husband knew it.
And so, three weeks later, on 29th November we welcomed a tiny ginger boy kitten to our family.
For the first month, it was like having a newborn baby again, and then a toddler – he was into everything! Plus we had to navigate Ella’s terror (she initially spent most of her waking time standing on the chairs in the kitchen because he couldn’t reach her there – he was still too tiny to jump up on them). Eventually, with love and encouragement from us, an incredible amount of courage from deep within herself and the cuteness of our new family member, she mostly overcame her fear and was able to stroke him, play with him and pick him up to cuddle him. She’s still a little nervous but I’m so proud of her for achieving what she has. We’ve had Pumpkin for about ten weeks now and I honestly can’t imagine him not being here.
However, on Friday evening two weeks ago I noticed that he was limping and hopping – holding one of his hind legs in the air. I gently picked him up to see if there was something stuck in his paw and I felt and heard a huge ‘click’. He yelped and scrambled to escape so I set him down and kept a worried eye on him. Things didn’t improve over the weekend so I took him to the vets on the Monday. He was very concerned and booked Pumpkin in for X-Rays (under general anaesthetic – kittens don’t tend to sit still when you ask them to) the very next day. So on the Tuesday morning I left my curious little kitten in the caring and capable hands of strangers who would try and find out what was wrong.
It turns out that we’ve adopted a wonky kitten. Pumpkin’s pelvis is misaligned and his left hip joint is slightly deformed – instead of the ball part of the ball-and-socket joint being perfectly round, it has two flat sides so it doesn’t fit into the socket neatly. As a result of this, his kneecap is in totally the wrong place and his knee keeps on dislocating (hence the loud click I felt and heard when I picked him up to see what was wrong). His right knee is the same but to a lesser degree. So whenever he walks, his knees keep popping out of place. Ouch – no wonder he was limping.
Our only hope was surgery, scheduled for two days later. The vet explained that it would only be a temporary fix as Pumpkin is still growing, but that it was the best he’d be able to do for now. He planned to put some special stretchy mesh into Pumpkin’s leg to literally pull his kneecap into the right position and hold it there so that hopefully it stays put and everything grows around it in the right way. There’s nothing he could do for his hips at this point in time.
So, last Thursday I once again left my still-small kitten with the vet for his second anaesthetic in two days, this time with a major operation to go with it. My yoga class that day helped enormously with the worry I was feeling. Thankfully the surgery went well, so we went to collect him together as a family that evening and he was ready and waiting for us in his travel basket, mewing like crazy, high on the cat equivalent of morphine.
We let him out in the kitchen and I realised that I’d completely forgotton to warn the girls that his leg would have been shaved so the vet could perform the surgery without all the fur getting in the way. Poor Ella completely freaked out and couldn’t even look at him – it took me ages to calm her down. After several hours she finally realised that he was the same Pumpkin that he’d always been, and after repeated assurances that his fur would most definitely grow back over time, she was able to first look at and then touch him again.
We’re now a week post-op and Pumpkin is recovering well, though still limping for now. The vet is pleased with how he’s doing and now it’s just a matter of waiting until he’s fully grown before we know whether he’ll need more (far more invasive) surgery involving bone re-shaping and all sorts of other scary sounding things that would need to be performed by the delicate hands of a specialist cat knee surgeon (who knew such a thing even existed?!).
Needless to say, the last few weeks have felt incredibly stressful and worrisome, and emotions have been running high. But I think we’re all learning lots of lessons from our little wonky kitten:
~ we don’t judge people (or cats!) on their appearance or their abilities/disabilities
~ sometimes decisions can be really hard to make and you just have to go with your instinct and trust that you’re doing the right thing
~ nobody’s perfect
~ you can get through anything if there is enough love being shared
We had no idea of the struggles that Pumpkin would face when we adopted him. As I sit on my sofa writing this he is curled up on my lap purring contentedly. We unanimously agree that we wouldn’t change him – he may not be perfect, he may be a little wonky, but he’s ours. And our little wonky kitten is the perfect fit for our little wonky family.
Phone: +44 (0) 7794 595783
Email: chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk
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